The Donald’s Pathetic Afghan Flip-Flop

We are speaking of his horrid lip-synching effort last night to keep time with
the voice of his ventriloquist generals. Not only was the substance of their
speech threadbare, risible, foolish and quasi-criminal; they basically turned
the Donald into a pathetic joke in the process of flip-flopping him on worldwide
TV.

To justify the 180 degree shift on an anti-Afghan policy position that he had
tweeted about vociferously for six years running (see below), the Donald’s teleprompter
scripters offered an explanation that was beyond lame:

"My original instinct was to pull out – and, historically, I
like following my instincts. But all my life I’ve heard that decisions are much
different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. In other words,
when you’re President of the United States."’

Actually, we are relived to hear Trump finally recognizes that he actually
is President and wish he would start doing something presidential. For instance,
he could declassify all the NSA intercepts about purported Russian meddling
in the US election, and prove that it’s all a hoax generated by Obama’s despicable
national security advisor, John Brennan, and a handful of deep state operatives
who properly feared the Donald’s solid anti-interventionist instincts.

So doing, Trump could crush the anti-Russian hysteria and the Deep State/Dem/mainstream
media campaign to hound him from office and get on with the desperately important
business of effectuating a rapprochement with Russia. World peace depends on
it; the failing American Empire can’t be dismantled without it; and the nation’s
fast growing fiscal calamity can’t be stemmed unless there is a drastic, multi-hundred
billion reduction in defense spending.

But it’s not to be. The Donald has been hoodwinked by three discredited, failed
generals – Kelly, McMasters, and Mattis – who have been dissembling,
spinning and lying to civilian officials about Afghanistan for most of the past
17 years.

Any generals worth their salt would have told their civilian superiors years
ago that Afghanistan is mission impossible and irrelevant to the security of
the American homeland. That’s because there never was more than a few hundred
al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and when bin-Laden hightailed to his hideaway
in Pakistan in 2003 that should have been the end of Washington’s pointless
but incredibly destructive invasion and occupation.

By contrast, there was never any US national security interest whatsoever in
cleansing the godforsaken lands of the Hindu Kush of the 12th century Taliban
fanatics who took over this hapless country during the 1990s. And largely with
weapons that had been supplied by the CIA during the 1980s in a pointless mission
to drive the Soviets out.

In short, the generals have spent 17 years sacrificing 2,400 dead US soldiers,
20,000 wounded and upwards of $1 trillion of taxpayer money to do what? Kill
tens of thousands of Taliban who never threatened us and who could not remotely
harm any American in farms, towns and cities across the land from sea to shining
sea – even as Washington’s war machine has reduced the Afghans’ own country
to rubble and economic desolation and caused upwards of 60,000 civilian deaths
and casualties.

Needless to say, rather than listening to his generals, the Donald would have
been well advised to heed the advise of the one Senator who actually understands
and can articulate the truth about Washington’s Afghan disaster. Said Rand Paul,
it’s time to come home now:

The mission in Afghanistan has lost its purpose, and I think it is a terrible
idea to send any more troops into that war. It’s time to come home now.

Our war in Afghanistan began in a proper fashion. We were attacked on 9/11.
The Taliban, who then controlled Afghanistan, were harboring al Qaeda, and after
being warned, and after an authorization from Congress, our military executed
a plan to strike back. Had I been in Congress then, I would have voted to authorize
this military action.

But as is typical, there was significant mission creep in Afghanistan.
We went from striking back against those who attacked us, to regime change,
to nation-building, to policing their country for them. And we do it all now
with an authorization that is flimsy at best, with the reason blurred, and the
costs now known. We do it with an authorization that was debated and passed
before some of our newest military personnel were out of diapers. This isn’t
fair to them, to the American people, or to a rational foreign policy.

In light of these obvious truths, what words of justification for a renewed
escalation of the US occupation did the generals put into the Donald’s teleprompter?

In a word, that Afghanistan might otherwise remain a "sanctuary"
for al-Qaeda and other terrorist marginalia who might be thinking of buying
an airline ticket to Mexico in order to infiltrate America before the Donald
gets his wall done!

But for crying out loud – don’t these fools recognize that it is their bombs,
missiles, drones and door-busting troops which have created most of the world’s
terrorists? And that until Washington stops raining death from the sea, sky
and land, the supply of fanatical young men in black turbans toting lethal weapons
or wearing suicide vests will not diminish.

And these jihadists most certainly will find "sanctuaries" in some
godforsaken hellhole somewhere on the planet. Indeed, a Martian wandering unto
the scene would surely think that Washington has actually been in the "sanctuary"
making business – with its destruction of previously stable states in Iraq,
Libya, Yemen, Syria and Somalia, among others.

And that’s to say nothing of the endless pockets of lawlessness in Saharian
and north Africa, Pakistan, Chechnya, Dagestan, other Muslim "stans"
of the former Soviet Union, any number of potential refuges in South Asia and
even the Muslim dominated suburbs of France, Belgium, England, Germany and more.

In other words, the logic of occupying Afghanistan to deny "sanctuaries"
to terrorists – even if it could be accomplished, which it can’t –
implies that Washington should occupy most of the planet. After all,
in the years since 9/11 virtually none of the hundreds of minor and major
terrorist incidents that have occurred (mostly) in Europe and North America
were organized and executed from Afghanistan.

For that matter, there were no Afghans at all involved in 9/11. Fifteen of
the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia and the others were from the
United Arab Emirates (2),Egypt and Lebanon. Only three of the 19 ever even visited
Afghanistan and all of them undertook their flight training and preparation
for the attack in Europe and America. The fact is, with 21st century technology
the evildoer who planned and directed the 9/11 abomination, Osama bin-Laden,
could have done so from nearly any hideout anywhere on the planet.

Furthermore, the overwhelming share of post-9/11 attacks have been the work
of homegrown terrorists and miscreants who got their inspiration from the Internet
and their weapons from do-it-yourself web-sites and manuals. Even the ones who
got foreign "training" for the most part did so in Syria and Libya
– two terrorist "sanctuaries" that absolutely would not exist
if Washington and its Gulf state allies had not attacked their governments.

Indeed, ending the war on the Assad government and working with Russia and
its allies to clear the remnants of ISIS from Syria would do far more to enhance
the safety and security of the American people than killing half the Taliban
army. Yet here is what the Donald’s ventriloquists mumbled as he lip-synched
along with the TelePrompTer:

Second, the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable.
9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from
Afghanistan because that country was ruled by a government that gave comfort
and shelter to terrorists. A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists,
including ISIS and al Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened before September
11th.

And, as we know, in 2011, America hastily and mistakenly withdrew from
Iraq. As a result, our hard-won gains slipped back into the hands of terrorist
enemies. Our soldiers watched as cities they had fought for, and bled to liberate,
and won, were occupied by a terrorist group called ISIS. The vacuum we created
by leaving too soon gave safe haven for ISIS to spread, to grow, recruit, and
launch attacks. We cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders made
in Iraq.

That is just plain risible hogwash. Osama bin-Laden was trained and financed
by the CIA in Afghanistan during the 1980s, returned to Saudi Arabia as a western
anti-communist hero in the early 1990s and only became an anti-American terrorist
after George HW Bush’s foolish intervention in an oil-drilling dispute between
Saddam Hussein and the Emir of Kuwait in 1991, which resulted in 500,000 pairs
of "crusader" boots on the purportedly sacred Islamic lands of Arabia.

Even then, bin-Laden operated for the next five years out of Sudan and when
forced out by the US in 1996 could have decamped to any number of backwater
refuges, but went to Afghanistan because of the Washington funded and enabled
networks he had set up there. That is to say, Afghanistan’s role in the horror
of 9/11 was happenstance; it was not some kind of unique, irreplaceable fount
of primary evil. And once bin-Laden decamped for Abbottabad (Pakistan) in 2003,
even that tangential linkage evaporated.

In essence, the Washington military machine has been pounding Afghanistan back
to the stone age for 17 years for no logical or rational reason except revenge
and the fact that unless it is outright defeated, as in Vietnam, the American
military machine rarely leaves that lands its occupies (e.g. Japan, South Korea,
Germany etc.)

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s 35 million citizen have been reduced to a life of
misery, destitution, violence and constant warfare. In fact, its living standard
has been cut to just $560 of GDP per capita – among the lowest figures anywhere
on the planet. Even then, what passes for "GDP" consists largely of
the drug trade and the immense multi-billions of corruption and graft on which
the Afghan state is based.

The Afghan operated logistical networks which bring military material and munitions,
fuel and provisions to the US occupational forces, for example, costs several
billions per year and gives inflation an altogether new definition. Military
gasoline delivered to the giant Bagram military base costs upwards of $250 per
gallon!

The sheer insanity of the occupation policy that the Donald has now embraced
is perhaps best illustrated by this juxtaposition. During 2017 DOD will spend
nearly $45 billion on a war to kill and destroy alleged enemies
in a country that has only $19.5 billion of GDP. Even then, the
Taliban controls upwards of 40% of the country, including much of the Pashtun/Sunni
heartland.

Yet even more preposterous than the demonization of Afghanistan that lies at
the heart of Washington’s policy is the generals’ ludicrous claim that withdrawing
would foster the rise of another ISIS, as purportedly happened in Iraq.

No it didn’t!

The medieval butchers now being driven from Raqqua and other dusty backwaters
of the Upper Euphrates were able to temporarily establish their demented caliphate
solely and exclusively because they were heavily armed by Washington and its
allies. That includes the $25 billion weapons cache Washington
left behind in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq on the naïve theory that there
was such a thing as an "Iraqi Army" when there was actually just Shiite
militias bent on revenge.

It also includes the massive additional weaponry which came when Khadafy’s
arsenals were emptied and transmitted up the CIA "ratline" through
Turkey to the Syrian rebels; and the billions more that was supplied by the
CIA and Saudis to the so-called "moderate rebels" being trained in
Jordan, who ended up selling their weapons or defecting to the jihadists.

In short, the "sanctuary" rationale for staying the course in Afghanistan
makes no sense whatsoever. And the apparent plan to raise the US force level
from 8,500 at present to 13,000 is even more farcical.

Below is the history of Washington’s build-ups and drawdowns in Afghanistan
over the last 17 years. At the peak, there were 200,000 uniforms and contractors
in the country – or one occupier for each 170 man, woman and child in the
land.

Needless to say, that massive build-up accomplished nothing but death and destruction
on both sides. Indeed, the evidence that the Afghans hate outside occupiers – as
they have since Alexander the Great – far more than their internal Taliban
tormenters is now as plain as day.

In that context, the generals’ plan to boost the American presence back to
about 30,000 military and contractors and to vastly step up the level of violence
through relaxed rules of engagement that will inexorably result in widespread
civilian casualties can only be described in one way: it borders on the criminal.

The Donald once had a voice of skepticism and dissent from the depredations
of the War Party. No more. He has already been defenestrated by the Deep State
and its legions of Imperial City allies, tools and shills.

But it’s worth remembering what the Donald once thought of the matter, and
the alacrity with which these sensible views were snuffed out by the rulers
of the Imperial City.

Last night’s speech also clarifies why the left-behind citizens of Flyover
America feel increasingly dispossessed, ignored and belittled. They thought
they were voting for America First, but in his first speech to the nation the
Donald capitulated to the Deep State and read a speech that sounded much like
it was being read to cameras by a hostage – or at least by self-deputized
tools of the Warfare State like George Bush, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton,
or Marco Rubio.